Javier Felipe Ricardo Pérez de Cuéllar de la GuerraKCMG (/ˈpɛrɛsdəˈkweɪjɑː/;[1]Spanish: [xaˈβjeɾ ˈperez ðe ˈkweʝaɾ]; born January 19, 1920)[2][3] is a Peruvian diplomat who served as the fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1, 1982 to December 31, 1991. He ran unsuccessfully against Alberto Fujimori for President of Peru in 1995 and following Fujimori's resignation over corruption charges, he was Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs from November 2000 until July 2001. In September 2004, he stepped down from his position as Peru's Ambassador to France, where he formerly resided. He is also a member of the Club de Madrid, a group of more than 100 former Presidents and Prime Ministers of democratic countries, which works to strengthen democracy worldwide.[4] At the age of 99 years, 60 days, Pérez de Cuéllar is currently both the oldest living former Peruvian prime minister and Secretary General of the United Nations.

Biography[]

Early years[]

Diplomatic career[]

Pérez de Cuéllar joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1940 and the diplomatic service in 1944, serving subsequently as Secretary at Peru's embassy in France, where he met and married his first wife, Yvette Roberts (died Lisbon, 2013). He also held posts in the United Kingdom, Bolivia, and Brazil, and later served as ambassador to Switzerland, the Soviet Union, Poland, and Venezuela. From his first marriage, he has a son, Francisco, born in Paris, and a daughter, Agueda Cristina, born in London.

He was a junior member of the Peruvian delegation to the first session of the General Assembly, which convened in London in 1946, and a member of the delegations to the 25th through 30th sessions of the Assembly. In 1971, he was appointed permanent representative of Peru to the United Nations, and he led his country's delegation to all sessions of the Assembly from then until 1975.

In 1973 and 1974, he represented his country in the Security Council, serving as its President at the time of the events in Cyprus in July 1974. On September 18, 1975, he was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Cyprus – a post he held until December 1977, when he rejoined the Peruvian Foreign Service. On 29 October 1975, in Cyprus, Mr. Perez de Cuellar married his second wife, the former Marcela Temple Seminario (14 August 1933,[5] – 3 July 2013)[6][7] with whom he had no children.

On February 27, 1979, he was appointed as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs. From April 1981, while still holding this post, he acted as the Secretary-General's Personal Representative on the situation relating to Afghanistan. In that capacity, he visited Pakistan and Afghanistan in April and August of that year in order to continue the negotiations initiated by the Secretary-General some months earlier.

Shortly before the end of his second term, he rejected an unofficial request by members of the Security Council to reconsider his earlier decision not to run for a third term, shortened to two years, as a search for his successor had not, as of then, yielded a consensus candidate. A candidate was found in late December 1991, and his second term as Secretary-General concluded, as scheduled, on December 31, 1991.

Later life[]

On July 22, 2005, Pérez de Cuéllar suffered a heart attack and was admitted to a hospital in Paris, he was released on July 30.
On June 19, 2017, with a lifespan of 35,581 days he surpassed Alfredo Solf y Muro (1872–1969) in terms of longevity and is now the oldest former Prime Minister in Peru's history. On 24 October 2018, it was reported that he died. The report was later denied.[9]

Miscellaneous[]

On August 30, 2017, as a follow up to the Black Swan Project, Spanish naval authorities finally salvaged the artillary remains of the frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes which had sank in 1804 and two of whose bronze cannons, weighing between 2 and 3 tons each, had been cast in Lima by Sevilian smelter Bernardino de Tejeda. Two of Tejeda's direct descendents and the members of the 1942 team in charge of the restoration of his sepulchral crypt were the future Peruvian Ambassadors Carlos Pérez Cánepa and Mr.Pérez de Cuéllar, then 24 and 22 years old, respectively.